


Resentment

by PeregrineWilliams



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Childhood Friends to Enemies to Something With Sexual Tension, Choking But Not In A Sexy Way (Sort Of), Emperor Lelouch, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Knight of Zero Suzaku, M/M, Masochism? probably, Non-Explicit Sex, Pre-Zero Requiem, Touch-Starved, forced confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24864262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeregrineWilliams/pseuds/PeregrineWilliams
Summary: I made the mistake of watching Code Geass for the first time in 2020 and now I'm a Lelouch apologist.Knight of Zero Suzaku wants to know the truth.
Relationships: Kururugi Suzaku/Lelouch Lamperouge | Lelouch vi Britannia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 82





	Resentment

Suzaku finished his nightly patrol as usual by taking one more pass by the Emperor's chambers. He heard a strange noise as he passed by the door, and made the executive decision to enter. No one else should be in here at this hour. The only ones allowed into the Emperor’s chambers were himself and CC, and he knew CC was in her own room already, so there was a high chance of a threat.

When he opened the door ready for a fight however, all he saw was the Emperor himself, sitting off the side of his grand canopy bed. He looked up in alarm at his knight in the doorway, and Suzaku realised it wasn’t really the Emperor there, it was just Lelouch, and he was crying.

Susaku relaxed his stance and closed the door behind him, watching Lelouch suspiciously as he quickly turned away from him and wiped his eyes. “Did something happen? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he replied. His voice was normal and even, but he was pointedly staring at the wall in front of him, away from Suzaku. “There is no danger to report. You may continue your rounds.”

Suzaku strode to the other side of the room to kneel in front of Lelouch, his arm over his chest in his usual salute. “How may I be of service to you, your Majesty?” he asked, in a harder tone than the words implied.

Lelouch didn’t respond immediately, looking down on him with a hollow expression and tired eyes, his hands clasped together while his elbows rested on his knees.

“Are you losing your resolve?” he asked unsympathetically, and Lelouch’s fingers twitched a little.

“No,” he said quietly, but firmly.

Suzaku nodded. “What do you need?”

He was silent again, and Suzaku stood to let him be, but was caught by the wrist before he could walk away. “Stay,” he said, even more quietly. “Until I can fall asleep. Please. It’s… been difficult.”

Suzaku sighed and removed his uniform jacket and boots before sitting down on the bed beside him. Lelouch crawled under the covers, curling up and pressing his face to the side of Suzaku’s leg. He sat there for a while, feeling Lelouch breathe stutteringly against his pants as he still insisted on trying to hide the fact that he was crying.

He couldn't remember ever having seen Lelouch like this before. This… emotionally vulnerable, he supposed. He wondered if he was mourning his own mortality, or the sins of his past, or some other combination. Even if he asked, Lelouch would lie to him anyways. Suzaku didn't feel sorry for him, not really. He deserved this, for all he had done. Suzaku himself was only going along with this necessary evil because Lelouch would be paying the ultimate price in the end. A deal with the devil, no more. It was just his job to make sure it came to completion. His only real point of sympathy was his betrayal of Nunnally...

Suzaku gave in eventually and took to running a hand through Lelouch’s hair soothingly, until his breathing finally started to steady and slow.  
  


* * *

Lelouch slowly woke, the most rested and comfortable he had ever remembered being. There were warm arms around him, and the sensation was so foreign to him that it was hard to conceptualize as reality. He opened his eyes and looked up from Suzaku’s shirt to see him sleeping soundly, wrapped around Lelouch's thinner form. There was a tightness in his chest, then, as he observed Suzaku. He was relaxed, and comfortable, and the furrow in his brow and the hard lines around his eyes were gone. He looked younger, again: the age he was meant to be. Lelouch hadn’t seen that face on him for well over a year. At least not when he looked at Lelouch.

His skin seemed to almost prickle, in a way, wherever it was against Suzaku. Endorphins from physical touch, of course. He felt… good, physically. He had always told himself he didn’t need it. It always seemed to mean so much more to other people than it meant to him, so asking for it was far more trouble than it was worth. He was always satisfied when he could dote on his sister. The act of helping her to bed, or cleaning her face, or combing her hair, or hugging her goodbye when he went to class was all more than enough affectionate connection for him.

He hadn’t seen his sister in months. She wouldn’t want his affections now anyways.

His chest ached again, and he breathed deeply in Suzaku’s shirt to distract himself from the feeling. He didn’t want to admit how long this had been a desire of his, but he had been aware of it for certainly more than a year. Suzaku had always been special, second only to Nunnally, but different. Lelouch didn’t deserve him, though. That was never a point of contention.

Suzaku was asleep and content now, though, and the craving settled deep into his bones. Lelouch would die next month. Did something like this even matter anymore? In his weakness he allowed himself to shift his arm out from under Suzaku’s to reach up to his face.

And stopped, his palm hovering less than an inch from his cheek. He didn’t deserve it.

He curled his arm back in to his chest and found Suzaku’s other arm, under the pillow. He stared at it a moment before reaching to touch his hand, only slightly bigger but much more calloused than his own. He carefully pulled it closer and leaned his cheek into it, closing his eyes and allowing himself to enjoy the endorphin rush from the more sensitive skin on his face. Just one more minute, and it would be enough, and he could move on again, and do what needed to be done.

When he opened his eyes Suzaku’s green ones were staring back at him, the hard lines on his face back in their usual position.

Lelouch immediately rolled over in the bed to face away from him.

“Lelouch?” Suzaku’s voice said from behind him, but his tone was accusatory, not curious.

“Thank you for your service for the night,” Lelouch responded evenly. Masks always made things easier, but as long as his face was obscured from view he could pretend it was in place. “You are now dismissed.”

There was a long pause, in which Lelouch was expecting the ‘Yes, your Majesty’ that never came. Instead, it was broken by “Do you want me, Lelouch? Is that the real reason you commanded me to live?”

His mouth went dry and he felt the bed shift as Suzaku moved closer. “Of course I wanted you. You’re the most skilled pilot in the Brittanian army. You would have been a most valuable asset to-”

Suzaku grabbed his shoulder and yanked it roughly, forcing him onto his back, his other hand gripping Lelouch’s throat. “You’re lying to me again! You already tried convincing me! I was in your way! You would have won your battles if I was dead!”

Lelouch gasped shallowly under him. He instinctively grabbed at his wrist, but he knew he had no hope of besting Suzaku in any kind of physical way. All Lelouch had were his words, but Suzaku was yelling at him with such an unexpected hatred, the way he hadn’t heard since…

“Is that why you killed Euphie? So you could have me to yourself?” he screamed at Lelouch, angry tears welling in his eyes.

“No!” he protested loudly before he could stop himself, gasping for air then as he had used all that he had left.

Suzaku removed his hand from his throat to grip the collar of Lelouch’s shirt. “Then tell me why,” he demanded, his jaw clenched in anger even as he tried to blink away his tears. “Do  _ not _ lie to me this time.”

He took a few seconds to fill his lungs again. “I… can’t-”

Suzaku yanked up on his collar and slammed him back down against the bed. Lelouch’s head snapped back painfully and a dizziness clouded his mind for a moment. “You  _ will _ tell me,  _ now.” _

He didn’t have the capacity to come up with a lie Suzaku would believe right now and he couldn’t let Suzaku kill him before the time was right. “I can’t tell you!” he choked in desperation.

“Why not?” he yelled, slamming him against the bed again. His strength was overwhelming, and Lelouch could only be thrown around like a ragdoll.

“Because-,” he coughed as he reluctantly forced out the words. “Because you might forgive me!”

Suzaku stared down at him, his grip slacking in his shirt just slightly. “What?” he asked coldly.

Lelouch avoided his gaze as he coughed a few more times. “I c-can’t tell you because there’s a chance you might forgive me, and then it will be harder for you to… I still need you to kill me.”

“I’m not as soft as I used to be,” he said, grabbing Lelouch’s jaw now and forcing him to look him in the eye. “Tell me now. Why did you use your Geass on her? Why did you hurt her? Why did you hurt me?”

“I never meant to!” he admitted, finally, going limp in his grip as he resigned to defeat, but closing his eyes so he didn’t have to look at Suzaku. “It wasn’t how I meant things to go. I... It… was an accident.”

“Tell me what happened,” Suzaku said quietly, letting go of his face but keeping hold of his shirt.

Lelouch smiled sadly and took a shuddering breath, trying not to think about what kind of person he had become that even this amount of physical contact felt good to him. Maybe he just felt he deserved it. “I… went to meet with her and she already knew who I was at that point, so we just talked, and I tried to use her but she convinced me otherwise. She bested me. I agreed to her plan and the war was going to end, and the world would no longer need Zero,” he chuckled, feeling the wetness start to gather in his eyes. “And then… and then I lost control of my power, and I ruined everything,” he said simply, like it was a joke. It was all a huge joke on him and his plans and his ideals. “I could turn my Geass on and off whenever I wanted to before that, but it chose that moment to become permanent. I made her order genocide and she fought it the whole time, and so I had to kill her to stop it. There was no other way. I can't control it once it's done. I never wanted to hurt her, but it was all my fault…”

Tears quietly streamed down Suzaku’s face as he listened, his head eventually bowing to rest against Lelouch’s chest. “She fought your power, the whole time?” he asked.

“Yes. She and Nunnally are the only ones that have been able to do that, for a time.”

“Then she was even stronger than me,” he laughed sadly, gripping Lelouch’s shirt with both hands. “I… loved her, you know.”

“I know,” he said softly, tentatively wrapping his arms around Suzaku as he cried into Lelouch’s chest. “I know. I’m sorry, Suzaku, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He continued to repeat apologies as his composure failed him, starting to cry into Suzaku’s hair.

Suzaku allowed himself to be held until he was spent, then sat up and chuckled, wiping his eyes. “You know, I don’t remember the last time you ever really apologised for anything.”

Lelouch looked away again as he wiped his own eyes. “My mistakes are my own burden to bear and atone for. I don’t expect anyone to absolve me of them. Telling people that I’ve hurt my intentions only serves to put some of that burden on to them too.”

“I wanted to bear this one,” Suzaku replied, reaching to squeeze Lelouch’s hand a little. “It was important to me, so thank you for telling me.”

“It wasn’t willingly,” he muttered, rubbing the red marks on his neck. “You’re one of the people I never wanted to have to hurt…”

“Why did you really command me to live, Lelouch?”

He glanced back at him, then down at his hand that was grasped in Suzaku’s. “I was afraid,” he admitted. “I had resolved to never use my Geass on you, but you kept scaring me, because it seemed like your own life wasn’t as precious to you as… it was to me. I panicked.”

Suzaku sat quietly for a moment, just thinking. “Lelouch, is this what you want?” he asked finally, crawling closer to Lelouch again and pressing him back down to the bed.

“What?” he asked in alarm, trying to fight the undignified heat rising to his face.

“You want this, me, don’t you?” he clarified, pulling Lelouch’s legs up around his hips and taking his wrists to hold above his head.

“What?” he asked again, at a slightly higher pitch as he looked up at Suzaku and felt his body rapidly start to betray him.

“Is this what  _ you _ want? All of these things you’ve done, justified or not... you did it for Nunnally. You did it for the Black Knights. You did it for Japan. You did it for me. You’re going to die soon, for the whole world. What do you want for yourself? Is it this? Do you want me?”

Lelouch blinked up at him in silence for a long moment. What did he really have to lose anymore? “Yes,” he whispered once he managed to look away again.

Lelouch closed his eyes as his shirt was pulled over his head, and he felt Suzaku’s calloused hands trail down his chest and sides before his pants were pulled off too. He limply let Suzaku undress him fully, and presumably himself, from what he could hear. He also seemed to move away from Lelouch and root around in his bedside drawers, and Lelouch tried not to let his embarrassment show when Suzaku definitely found what he was looking for. He kept his eyes closed even as he felt Suzaku lean over him and press his slick fingers between his legs, trying to stay as still as possible.

“All those moves Zero made that never made sense to me, was it because I was a weakness of yours, like Nunnally was?” Suzaku asked as he worked him open, and Lelouch tried valiantly to keep his expression neutral through the discomfort.

When he didn’t respond Suzaku took his jaw in his hand again and hooked his fingers inside him. Lelouch gasped as his eyes flew open and he was forced to confront Suzaku’s face directly above his. “Y-Yes…,” he choked out, trying not to shiver and allow Suzaku to see just how affected he was.

“You might have actually won, without all of it coming to this, if I hadn’t been your opponent, wouldn’t you? You had to make your plans while also making sure your enemy’s ace pilot wasn’t killed in the process,” he realised slowly as he spread his fingers.

Lelouch nodded a little, breathing more and more shallowly. “My…” He swallowed and continued with effort, his voice more of a rasp. “My goal was always to create a world where Nunnally was allowed to live happily surrounded by whatever friends she wanted, including you…”

“But you also wanted me.”

“I did. You were the only person I could trust her to - ” He gasped and arched his back off the bed as Suzaku hooked his fingers again.

“But  _ you _ also wanted me,” he said again, with added emphasis.

“Y-Yes… I always knew we would be able to do anything together. You were my opposite but my equal. We could make up for eachother’s faults. I wanted you to be mine, strategically, but also…”

“Like this,” Suzaku finished for him as he removed his fingers and pushed inside Lelouch himself. He gasped again and shuddered under Suzaku, his legs forced open wider as Suzaku’s hips met the skin of his thighs.

His hands flew down to grasp Suzaku’s wrists as he grabbed hold of Lelouch to lift him into his slow thrusts. Lelouch’s head fell back against the bed, his mouth hanging open at the feeling of Suzaku inside him,  _ finally. _

There were plenty of complicated feelings of guilt, and desire, and unworthiness, and entitlement, and justice he was dealing with. Did Suzaku mean this as some kind of apology? Giving him what he really wanted most selfishly just before he had to be sacrificed for the greater good? Lelouch had thought about this all moments before, but now he was beyond such a capacity for critical internal debate as Suzaku grew faster and rougher with him.

He found himself moaning and quickly covered his mouth, before Suzaku forced his hand away and pinned it to the bed again. “If I knew how easy it was to make you lose your composure this way, I might have done it sooner,” Suzaku panted over him, and Lelouch only vaguely registered the sweat dripping from his softly curled hair and the curve of his muscular chest pressed against his own before he was overcome with pleasure, almost entirely untouched.

Suzaku continued to rock his hips into his limp and shuddering form until he found his own release deep inside of him, and collapsed on Lelouch gasping and exhausted. Lelouch wrapped his arms around him and hugged his head into his neck, running his hands through his hair.

Reality would come back to sober him when he had to assume his stolen throne again in an hour or so, but in this moment he allowed himself to forget his circumstances and pretend that Suzaku was his, for now.

He cupped Suzaku’s face as he was still trying to catch his breath and tipped it up to kiss him on the mouth, deluding himself into believing Suzaku wouldn’t notice how desperate it definitely must have felt.

The hands around his waist would take his life in a month, and Lelouch was as thankful for that as the moment of affection he had been allowed today.


End file.
